This research is designed to discover the performative or speech-act force of the verbal and nonverbal communicative acts through pragmatic analysis. Videotapes of three children interacting with family members and teachers will be transcribed and analyzed. The pragmatic analysis will vary for the particular performatives, but might include language, paralanguage, intonation, movement, verbal context and situational setting of the communicative act. Observations about ways different communicative acts are similar in the above domains will serve as the procedure for discovering performatives for each child. Parents and teachers will be taught to recognize the performatives. Comparisons will be made between the interaction of the adults with the autistic child before and after their recognition training. The feasibility of pragmatic analysis for diagnosis and treatment of the communication problems of autistic children will be evaluated.